Sunday, October 12, 2014

Chris Tapp: Idaho; Anatomy of the false confession (and the physical evidence which showed it was unreliable) which sent an innocent man to jail for decades while the killer roamed free; The Idaho Post Register; (Must Read. HL);

STORY: "Idaho murder case yielded 'false confession,' group says," by reporter Bryan Clark, published by the Idaho Post Register on October 11, 2014.

GIST: 'A decades-old Idaho Falls murder investigation resulted in a
grave injustice, sending an innocent man to prison and allowing a
killer to roam free.
Those are the conclusions of two reports on
the 1996 sexual assault and murder of 18-year-old Angie Dodge. The
reports were released by Judges for Justice, a national nonprofit that
investigates suspected false convictions. In 1998, Chris Tapp was
convicted of killing Dodge after he confessed during a series of
interrogations. He has been in jail or prison for 18 years, nearly half
of his life. The Judges for Justice reports were completed by
Steve Moore, a retired FBI supervisory special agent who formerly headed
up the Los Angeles-based investigations into al-Qaida, as well as Gregg
McCrary, a retired supervisory special agent who formerly trained FBI
agents in interrogation techniques at Quantico. Moore's 85-page
report is a scathing critique of the Idaho Falls Police Department's
investigative work. It found that Tapp's confession was demonstrably
false - obtained by threats of life imprisonment or death, and with
promises of immunity - and that the physical evidence in the case does
not match detectives' conclusions. "In the final analysis," Moore
concluded, "the actions of the IFPD detectives in this matter, even if
well-intentioned, were egregious. In their zeal, they abandoned even the
most basic investigative cautions and proceeded on a course charted by
their uninformed hunches, not the evidence."......... After
days of interrogation, Tapp confessed, saying that he and Hobbs
committed the crime. But McCrary said the interrogations were deeply
flawed. "This is a false confession," interrogation expert McCrary
wrote. "The authorities manipulated Mr. Tapp through a series of
explicit threats and promises, used false evidence ploys, asked a host
of leading questions and continually contaminated the interrogation by
disclosing nonpublic details of the crime and the crime scene, all of
which was improper."........The existing physical evidence pointed toward the fact that Tapp's confession was no good. Dodge's
body temperature was not taken by investigators, a critical oversight,
Moore said, because it would have allowed accurate determination of the
time of death. Instead, her body was put into refrigeration almost
immediately, "destroying the possibility of determining the time of the
attack." Taking a victim's body temperature, Moore said, is
"Investigation 101," and failing to do so is like "forgetting to take
fingerprints." Using the amount of urine contained in Dodge's
bladder at the time of her death, Moore concluded that the attack
probably couldn't have happened any earlier than 4 a.m. And Tapp was
known to have been with a roommate from 3 a.m. until later that morning. After
being shown a single-edged folding knife, Tapp indicated that it was
similar to the murder weapon. But the autopsy showed that Dodge was
stabbed with a double-edged knife. And blood-pattern evidence gathered from the scene did not match Tapp's description, Moore said. Further,
Moore found the police theory of the crime - that Dodge was attacked
and subdued by three men: Hobbs, Tapp and an unknown third - to be
inconsistent with physical evidence at the scene."

Link to Steve Moore's report of his investigation of the case for "Judges for Justice." (From the Judges for Justice site): Steve Moore, the Chief Inves­ti­ga­tor for J4J con­ducted the inves­ti­ga­tion and authored the report. He is a retired FBI
agent and his vast expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment, his learned
knowl­edge, his hun­dreds of hours of inves­ti­ga­tion in this case, and
his writ­ing abil­ity all pro­vide a com­pelling and per­sua­sive
state­ment of Tapp’s innocence.)http://judgesforjustice.org/media/Steve-Moore-Report-on-Chris-Tapp-October-7-2014.pdf

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:

Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.I
have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this
powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and
myself get more out of the site.The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible
years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr.
Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of
Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"
section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It
can be found at:http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmithInformation on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.htmlI look forward to hearing from readers at:

About Me

My interest in forensic pathology began with my Toronto Star investigative reporting into once famed since disgraced former doctor Charles Smith. I began this Blog after retiring from the Star in 2006 in order to follow the aftermath into the independent Goudge inquiry into many of Smith's cases. I have now begun to focus on cases involving flawed forensic science no matter where they occur (the recent Amanda Knox prosecution in Italy, for example) and am fascinated by the interest in the Blog from people in countries throughout the world. In another development, my interest in "junk science" "pseudo-experts" and the miscarriages of justice they all too often cause has drawn me deeply into the on-going U.S. death penalty debate where so many troubling cases involve issues relating to DNA and other developments in the world of forensic science. For all of this I rely on my experience as a reporter at the Toronto Star, my work as a lawyer in Ontario's criminal courts, and my abhorrence of injustice. Please send cases and developments which may be of interest to this Blog to hlevy15@gmail.com. Read on! Harold Levy.